Convincingly and sweetly told, Moon’s story is a striking authorial debut from illustrator Oliver.
An overscheduled kid gets a taste of the wild life of wolves and brings some of it back home.
Moon is a young girl with a long list of to-dos, including homework, trumpet lessons, “stuff and more stuff.…Moon always did it all. But she wondered what it would be like not to.” Moon tries to learn what it would be like to be wild in books, but that’s a dead end. Instead, she wanders out one night and befriends a benign pack of wolves. She asks them to show her “the wolfy ways,” leading to pouncing, playing, and, of course, howling. It’s exactly what one would expect, as Moon learns the value of being wild once in a while, which she brings back to her school, to the enjoyment (and participation) of classmates. But one passage resonates and stands apart from the rest, on a double-page spread in which Moon and a wolf calmly meditate, their images reflected in a pool of water, and Moon learns “How to be still, how to listen and feel.” The delicate illustrations, which have a dreamlike quality in their glowing whites and luminous pastels (not to mention Moon’s purple skin), suggest that this may be a dream, but what Moon learns is not.
Convincingly and sweetly told, Moon’s story is a striking authorial debut from illustrator Oliver. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-78160-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
While the slapstick may appeal to readers, sadly, this book is so confused and arbitrary, most of the humor falls flat.
A beleaguered giraffe tries to communicate that he isn’t a chair.
Poor Giraffe: on his first day in the jungle he’s seen as a chair by the other animals. Of course, giraffes aren’t actually found in jungles, and there’s little evidence of a jungle in the illustrations. While Giraffe does look a little like a chair, the fact that he has eyes and a mouth and nose and other features that distinguish the other animals from their seats makes it hard to understand why he is mistaken for a chair. But it’s all about the gag. Burach uses action-filled spreads to indicate a series of incidents that literally impede Giraffe’s speech, but when he is finally able to speak up for himself, he chooses instead to make a fake chair that looks like him. When that doesn’t work, he’s taken home by a dull-witted human who also uses him for a chair. Upon escaping, he is used as a chair by a lion waiting for dinner. When Giraffe finally decides to speak up and clear up the misunderstanding, he saves his own skin by scaring the lion, who thinks he’s a talking chair. The childlike drawings emphasize googly eyes, silly grins, a multitude of sound effects in emphatic display type, and lots of physical humor.
While the slapstick may appeal to readers, sadly, this book is so confused and arbitrary, most of the humor falls flat. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-236016-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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